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COURTESY OF BARBARA LEWIS
Joe and I thought it would
be a good idea to go to
Australia to visit his cousins
and go to the wedding.
But … about 25 years ago
I accompanied Joe on a one-
week business trip to Sydney.
We had horrible jet lag the
entire time, an experience we
weren’t eager to recapture.
Why not take a cruise from
the U.S. to Sydney instead
and make the 14-hour time
change gradually?
In the end, Andrea’s son
and his bride didn’t want any-
one they didn’t know at their
wedding. But the seed had
been planted in our brains:
a trip of this magnitude —
almost two months — was
something we’d be less likely
to want to do as we got older.
It seemed like a now-or-never
proposition.
Princess Cruises Lines’
Island Princess was sailing
from Los Angeles in January,
so we booked a spot. We
didn’t know at the time that
the L.A.-to-Sydney cruise
was a four-week segment of
a three-month cruise around
the world, which had started
in Fort Lauderdale and gone
through the Panama Canal
and up the coast of Mexico
before we joined.
After Sydney, the cruise
was scheduled to visit Bali,
Sri Lanka, Abu Dhabi, Dubai,
the Suez Canal and Jordan. It
had originally been scheduled
to dock in Haifa, but that was
scuttled after Oct. 7. About
midway through our cruise,
plans changed again, due to
Houthi attacks on ships in
the Red Sea. The ship would
skip the Middle East entirely,
adding two additional ports
in Australia and then heading
for Mauritius, Cape Town
and the Canary Islands before
sailing to Gibraltar and Rome,
another one of its segment
terminals. Those on the ship
who had been planning to
leave in Dubai had to scram-
ble to make alternative plans.
The Island Princess was like
a floating resort, with two
pools, three hot tubs, a gym,
a sauna and a spa, in addi-
tion to dining rooms offering
gourmet meals and numerous
bars and a theater, all provid-
ing good entertainment in the
evening.
On our second day, we
went to the Jewish Friday
night service, attended by
about 40 people, and met Gail
and Ken Posner, formerly
of West Bloomfield, now of
Royal Oak. We had many
acquaintances in common,
and our musician sons knew
each other.
Once we got to Sydney, we
spent a few days at the sub-
urban home of Joe’s cousin,
Simone, but spent most of the
time at the apartment of her
significant other, which over-
looked the Sydney Harbor
Bridge and Circular Quay,
with its many ferries, a Metro
station, a tram station and
the passenger ship terminal,
where a different ship docked
every day. We were two
blocks from the iconic Opera
House, across the street from
the beautiful Botanic Gardens
and within walking distance
of many museums and sites
of interest.
We attended their pro-
gressive synagogue, North
Shore Temple Emanu-El,
and met their rabbis, Nicole
Roberts from New York City
and Russian-born Moshe
Givental, who had lived in
Metro Detroit for many years.
We also went to a concert of
Viennese music, mostly by
Jewish composers, at Sydney’s
ornate Great Synagogue, built
in 1878.
One day we went to famous
Bondi Beach, followed by
lunch at Shuk, an Israeli-
In the Great
Synagogue in
Sydney
On the beach
in Picton, New
Zealand
Barbara and Joe
with Andrea
Cooper
COURTESY OF BARBARA LEWIS